“People are seeing incredible results using Amazon’s search products,” which is a “genius” tool that allows marketers to directly target consumers who have an “incredibly high intent” and then only pay when an ad appears as a search result, said John Denny, VP of eCommerce & digital marketing at Cavu Ventures.
However, he added, “the challenge that I see is that typically is the only ad lever that they are implementing when there is a whole rich tool set of Amazon advertising tools they can also use.”
At the Digital Food & Beverage conference in Austin this summer, he explained that Cavu Ventures encourages its brands to use Amazon Display, Amazon Video and their over-the-top video options as potentially more engaging marketing tools that will help forge real bonds with consumers in a way that thumbnail images that appear during a sponsored search result do not.
Video advertising on Amazon is “a rapidly emerging area where consumers are watching over the Internet video and Amazon is offering this product in full screen, non-skippable. Meaning that your spot will run for the full 30 seconds and … it is a really forced view,” he said.
The end result is an “incredibly engaging tapestry or platform to run your TV commercial and your video that also is incredibly targeted because it is based on all of Amazon targeting [data] within their echo-system,” he added.
Taking advantage of Amazon advertising must be a team effort
To fully take advantage of the marketing potential of Amazon, Denny notes that brands need to look at it not as a single retail channel – but as a display network that reaches across platforms to find consumers where they are – not just when they are on its website.
Denny acknowledged that some companies may be slow to adopt these tools because it requires inter-departmental teamwork in that the funding may need to come from the marketing team, rather than out of the eCommerce teams likely more limited advertising budget.
He explained that what makes Amazon programmatic display and video so impactful is that it uses Amazon signal data to reach consumers across tens of thousands of sites, the same way as Google display network or any other display network.
He added that because consumer interactions with company communications is evolving to expand across channels, companies should also expand their view of how ecommerce marketing and advertising can have an impact beyond their silos.
